1964 Teisco Del Ray MJ-2L
This 1964 Teisco was dated with the information provided at TeiscoTwangers.com (great site!). This guitar was super cool looking of course (as most of these 60s Japanese guitars are), but it also was as wonderfully playable as any nice guitar should be. We invested in making it so. We tried o keep everything original on these guitars (and on this one we haven’t changed anything – it’s completely original, as far as we can tell). And we did whatever repairs or cleaning is necessary (on this one, we just worked on the frets and cleaned the electronics). The electronics were very clean and nice. The frets needed cleaning around them (and even under one of them). There was also some deadness around the 10th fret that we fixed. The guitar already had great action so no adjustments needed there, and the neck was straight as an arrow.
The neck on this guitar was one of our favorites. It was a big chunky neck that feels great in your hand. Pickups are microphonic pick-ups, and they have those sounds that you may be after if reading this – that warm clean sound and that massive chunky distorted sound. They nail it.
We had this guitar set up with 8 gauge strings (believe it or not), and it plays them very well – no buzzing or jangling. Though I would say the guitar was probably ultimately better suited for maybe 10s, but each player has his or her preferences on that of course.
The guitar looked great and played beautifully well, in addition it had that unmistakable vintage 60s Japanese pickup sound that we just love.
